Sri Lankan Bar to take issue with C’wealth Secretary General
Tuesday, 20 August 2013 00:00
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BASL President says as stakeholders, local Bar has the right to know content of legal opinions sought by Kamalesh Sharma on CJ 43 impeachment
Demands transparency from the Secretariat
Secretary General refuses to disclose legal opinions to CMAG, cites “privilege”
By Dharisha Bastians
The influential Bar Association of Sri Lanka has decided to demand to see legal opinions on the impeachment of Shirani Bandaranayake sought by Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma, which he has declined to make public or disclose to the powerful Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), despite requests.
Sri Lankan
Bar Association President Upul Jayasuriya said that the country’s lawyers had decided to write to the Secretary General directly, as citizens of the Commonwealth and a member of the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association, because they had a “right to know the opinion of international jurists” on Bandaranayake’s impeachment.
“We are interested in this matter ourselves, these are opinions sought about the Sri Lankan judicial system. We are stakeholders in this issue so whether the impeachment of Shirani Bandaranayake was wrong or right, we have every right to know,” Jayasuriya told Daily FT.
In the name of transparency, the Secretary General has an obligation to reveal the content of the opinions he had sought about the Sri Lankan Chief Justice’s impeachment, the BASL President added.
“Kamalesh Sharma did not pay for these independent opinions with his personal silver – he paid for it with Commonwealth funds,” Jayasuriya charged. He said that as a member of the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association, which was responsible for conceptualising the Latimer House principles that govern the independence of the judiciary of Commonwealth Member States, the BASL is entitled to know if there has been a violation of these principles or not.
Secretary General Sharma, who had sought the legal opinions of a South African and a British jurist on Bandaranayake’s impeachment earlier this year, has declined CMAG’s requests to reveal the content of these opinions, it was exclusively reported on Colombo Telegraph’s website recently.
“As these legal opinions would be germane to the deliberations of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group with respect to Sri Lanka, I request that these documents be provided to High Commissioners whose ministers sit on CMAG so that they may consider the findings. I would appreciate receiving the opinions today,” said Canadian High Commissioner to London Gordan Campbell in a letter to the Secretary General in May this year.
In response, Sharma claimed that there was a longstanding practice of successive Secretaries-General that communications in support of Good Offices engagements were privileged.
“Indeed, it would be injurious to the discretion, trust and ultimately, the effectiveness of the Secretary-General’s Good Offices if the sources and nature of privileged communications were to be compromised,” Sharma’s response to Campbell that was copied to all High Commissioners whose ministers are members of CMAG said.
